Borat: The King of Bad Taste
Though I’m not a Kazakh, yet I’m convinced that this film needs a footnote in the heading itself-the Kazakh TV reporter it portrays is a fictitious character.
For the people used to political correctness Borat is a highly unsuitable film but for the rest outrageously funny. Its comedy is acutely crude to the extent that often it acquires a kind of sublimity. It’s so brazenly shameless and offensive that instead of hating the poor Borat, we sympathize with him and mistake his hatred for women, Jews and “civilized behavior” for innocence. Only because of his purity of crudeness he gets away with his obtuse vulgarity and we are left with no alternative but to laugh.
For the benefit of those, who are yet to catch glimpse of this genius of bad taste, Borat is a story of a TV journalist who has come to the US from a fictitious country called Kazakhstan. He has been sent by his government to learn American culture and to make a film on it. However he falls in love with Pamela Anderson and tries to forcibly marry her. His misadventures leave his high and dry.
Though government of real Kazakhstan took it for a misrepresentation of their country and people, however it seems more of a satirist’s take on our prejudices, biases and cultivated sense of political correctness.
Many could receive a cultural shock watching this film as does the Americans in the film who encounter Borat, the overtly friendly pal.
It shakes all our pretensions and makes us laugh from the beginning till the very end where comes a Kazakh censor board disclaimer that reads- this film is unsuitable for kids below 3.
The scene where Borat and his obese producer run around wrestling in the hotel corridor is really gross. Overall Borat is a brilliant and outrageous film that meets every criterion to get banned and wiped off our minds for the sake of sanity and order.
Hats off to this guy who is still flickering around in cinemas and public memories.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
I’m really not a Borat fan, I don’t think I could sit through a 5 min sketch of his let alone a whole movie! Nevertheless a nicely written review and welcome to PFC as an author.
thanks Sangeeta, even i find this Borat guy disgusting at times..
Borat really put me off.. I was kind of disgusted watching this retarded film…
yes, it’s highly anit-civilizational at times……but that’s what i like about it..
Borat is the funniest shit i have seen in a loooong time. Never laughed so much in a movie.
Borat was not only offensive but it was pathetic. If you think a guy kissing his sister on her lips is funny, you’ll love Borat.
Borat put me off too. It wasn’t funny at all. Rather lame and crude at times.
And there people in the theatre who started laughing when they were showing the titles. How can someone be so lame??
You come to a movie with a prejudgment and that at times ruins it. Just
you guys have no sense of humour